


Soldier, Knight and Goddess

by navaan



Category: DCU (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Crossover, Dream Sex, F/M, Getting Together, Holly Poly, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M, complicated romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 07:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5699833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sees her for the first time on a battlefield. But she's just a dream. She saves Tony, but vanishes. But she's always part of their lives - and then she actually is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soldier, Knight and Goddess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pokolips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pokolips/gifts).



The first time he sees her is on a battlefield. 

Hydra has become the only thing on his mind during battle. For today it's his job to keep them all focused on him, so Bucky can work his magic unnoticed, behind the lines. The kid is a natural with explosives and Steve is going to give him all the time he needs to go unnoticed. 

That also means that at the moment he's standing alone against a whole battalion of German soldiers, not all of them Hydra. On the battlefield that doesn't make much of a difference. They are all of them enemies, ready to kill him.

He ducks out of the way of the bullets, uses his shield to protect his flank and then topples over one of the soldiers closest to him. He throws his shield and catches another one in the chest, hard enough to make him pull up the gun and miss Steve by inches. The shield careens away at the wrong angle though and he can't catch it in time. He knows soldiers are closing in behind him, so he he jumps out of the way, after the shield, but grunts and cries behind him surprise him. When he looks up, she's there.

A vision in white cotton and gold armor, wielding a sword and a shield, round like his own. 

His own shield sticks in the mud at her feet, right where the soldier falls she just took out.

He stares.

He must be dreaming. Perhaps he spent too much time in museums sketching old statues and now he's breathed in some poison. With a dirty uniform sleeve he tries to rub at his eyes, but she's still there.

And she is smiling at him.

“There's always strife in men's world. Wherever I go.”

Her voice is strong, but wistful. It's the sweetest sound. “That's a bleak thought,” he says, his mouth and throat dry. “Let's hope we can be better one day.”

Her smile brightens, before all hell breaks loose around them and they both spring back into action. By the time it's over an Bucky is at his side again, she's gone. 

Like a dream.

* * *

She carries Tony out of the building like it's the only normal thing to do. Tony is 5 and he doesn't know what just happened, but he knows that normal people don't jump out of a 16th story window and then float to earth like it's nothing. Not even in New York, where his father says, anything is possible.

But he isn't afraid. The woman holding him is beautiful with dark, black hair like his mother's and a friendly smile. When she sits him back down, lets him carry his own weight, she smiles. “You're a brave little boy,” she says and kisses his brow.

By the time his parents are there, his mother hugging him and crying, the woman is gone. Tony thinks she must have been an angel, because nobody believes she'd ever been there.

* * *

Steve wakes up in a time he has no place in. Until he has. There are the Avengers. There is Iron Man. And then there's Tony. It all makes no sense, but too much of it at the same time.

He never feels as whole as when he's with Tony.

“Love,” Diana whispers in his dreams, “is always the answer.” 

She's been in his dreams since the first time he saw her. Sometimes he thinks that whole time he spent in the ice, he really was with her. It's stupid and he never talks about it. These dreams are his and his alone.

Not even Tony knows about them.

He does not speak about them.

Not even when he wakes, her name on his lips and Tony in his arms.

He's in love with this man. And Diana is only a fantasy. 

He still feels torn and guilty and sure that this is exactly where he wants to be anyway.

* * *

“You need to believe in yourself first, Tony,” she tells him. It's another vivid dream and Tony has just admitted that he loves Steve, that Steve is real to him in a way that he always wished Diana could be.

“But I am,” she says and sits down beside him, on a fallen white marble pillar. Her hair is dancing in the light breeze as she looks out at the sea. “I am. You only have to see. I am an Amazon. There is nothing more real than that.”

“And Steve?”

She smiles. It's so knowing, it hurts. “Love is easy, Tony. Much easier when you trust your own feelings.”

He loves Steve. He loves a figment of his imagination. How can he ever trust his feelings?

* * *

He can't help it. He sketches her sometimes, then he hides the pictures. Nobody would know who the mystery woman is, but he feels uncomfortable letting anyone get even a tiny glimpse of her outside his dreams. It feels to much like he's betraying Tony somehow.

“Steve!” Tony suddenly calls out and his heart drops. He had been so engrossed in sketching that he hadn't even heard him walking up. “How can you... How... This... I know her! But how can you know Diana?”

It's the strangest and most unexpected revelation. They stare at each other. “That's impossible. I saw her once during the war...”

“She saved my life when I was a kid...”

So much that has never been said, and suddenly they share another secret. But this one is special.

And weird.

And beautiful.

And complicated.

Just like the rest of their lives.

* * *

That night for the first time they are on the island together. Diana is waiting for them on the beach. She's smiling, like she'd expected them to come together. “Finally,” she says.

Tony, always the scientist, is full of questions immediately. “Where are we?” 

“Dreaming,” she says. “This isn't really Themiscyra. Men don't have a place there. But I like to come home, even in my dreams.”

“Themis...?”

“Themiscyra. My home, Tony. I told you about it once. The home of the Amazons.”

Steve can't help it, but he can't stop grinning. This is another dream. Diana is here. Even more so, now Tony is here too. He doesn't hesitate to stroke a hand along Tony's arm and reach for Diana with the other. 

Her smile is glorious.

“Finally,” she repeats. The fabric she's wearing doesn't leave much to the imagination, but he's still surprised when she sinks down onto the sand and reveals that there's really nothing beneath. Tony licks his lips. “I'm real,” she promises. “And you are too. Both of you.”

He doesn't know who sinks down next, who kisses him first. He's devoured by her. Diana is open and so sure, Tony's emotions are right there visible for anyone and he's so vulnerable. Steve asks himself what they are seeing in him, as they push him down to lie in the sand, touching, demanding, kissing. 

He was always whole with Tony. Always whole with Diana. 

There is no word for this, for what he is now.

There is no name for perfection.

* * *

It's AIM, but with some magical help. Her name is Circe and this time it might just be enough to break the Avengers.

Tony takes a shot at her, but is flung out of the way. Carol crashes into the side of a building and falls down limb and She-Hulk is held in a magical hold, frozen and helpless. Steve throws his shield and Circe laughs. “I should make you a little pig,” she says. “How would you like that?”

When the shield careens away from her, led by an invisible hand. and out of reach for him now, he curses under his breath. He needs to get to Tony, needs to reach his shield...

With a metallic clang the shield is stopped in mid air. When he looks up there she is, holding his shield with one hand as if that takes no strength at all. She's standing in front of Tony protecting him.

When their eyes meet, she smiles: “I was always real. Just somewhere else.” Then she looks at Circe: “And that's where you are going, Circe. This ends here.” 

For the first time the sorceress looks like she has met an worthy foe.

He's never sure what she does, but a portal opens, like a maelstrom of magic, Circe is sucked in. Steve thinks he sees something that looks like Themiscyra on the other side. Women in shiny battle armor. A woman at the front looking at Diana with a mournful look.

Diana is glowing.

Then the portal closes and Circe is gone. 

Diana is still there. The golden-green glow gone.

Real.

* * *

They don't talk that evening. Diana dresses in one of Tony's shirts, enjoying the feel of the silky red fabric of the button down. “I tried to explain it. But it's hard to explain things in a dream.”

On the sofa, their legs touching, all of their many limbs tangling as Tony wraps his arms around her and Steve pulls both of them closer to himself, the only thing that matters, is that they are all here.

And this time it isn't a dream.

He strokes Tony's hair, and Tony holds Diana's hand. 

All that matters is that they are together now.

All three of them.

Tomorrow Tony will have questions and Steve will have worries about their future and Diana will probably have some answers and some opinions of her own.

But as he buries his nose in Diana's hair, never letting go of Tony's neck, he knows none of it does matter much now.

Destiny has a way of setting a path.

And he's always been ready for this one.


End file.
